


A Little Eye Blink

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Author had fun writing this, F/F, Maybe Too Much Fun, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:56:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Azula talks to the moon; everything has a purpose.





	A Little Eye Blink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soulstoned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulstoned/gifts).

> The title is a Doctor Who reference.

The moon shines bright through the window of Azula’s prison cell.

The waxing and waning of the moon is the one of the few ways for her to mark time. There had been other ways, before, clocks that Zuko hung on the walls, calendars and watches. They’d been useful tools to help her figure out how to escape, over and over again (and maybe it’s pointless, but she doesn’t give up, has never learned how to give up).

Now she has only the moon.

She likes the moon.

It glitters down at her and tells her of the years that have passed, and embraces her with a shivery warmth she doesn’t quite understand.

—

Azula is a child of the sun.

She was born at noon, squalling her way into the world like the dragons of old, bearing the blessed mark of the Fire God Agni.

She is the daughter of the Fire Lord, his right and proper heir born to the wrong place in the line of succession. She commands legions of flame and fire and every breath of hers is golden destruction. The golden rays of the new sun embrace her and give her the strength to carry on. Even trapped within walls of stone, with no fuel to fan her flame higher, that golden embrace still cradles her.

At night, though, the moon lulls her to sleep with its quiet song, standing guard over her until the rays of the sun rise to catch her in their grasp again.

Azula is a child of Agni, and Tui was born of Agni. The moon loves her.

—

Zhao killed the moon.

His plan was stupid.

The moon cannot be killed in a land of waterbenders, surrounded by ocean. The moon cannot be killed in a land of ice and snow. The moon has her kingdom, and Fire cannot win on her terms.

Azula isn’t stupid.

She’s not going to kill the moon. Not like that.

—

Zuko comes to visit her, every month. He’s come to visit her every month for the last decade (barring her escape attempts, when she’s been briefly free of the bars) and talks to her, tells her things she doesn’t want to know about his stupid little life.

In bits and pieces, though, Azula learns other things.

She learns how stupid Zhao was, not sending spies along before him.

She learned about the girl who held a little bit of the moon in her. She learns about the Water Tribe peasant boy and how he loved that girl, and how she loved him too. She learns about the princess who was dutiful enough to go along with an arranged marriage, but willful enough to fall in love.

She learns about Yue.

—

She watches the moon at night, and lets it embrace her and encircle her.

Her fire grows stronger. She learns to lean into the tug of the reflected light, learns to listen to the silver-grey niggling thread at the back of her mind.

“Yue,” she speaks to the moon every night. “Yue. Yue.”

—

She rambles to the moon. To Yue. She rambles, spinning stories about her fears and anger and despair.

She lets bits of herself show. Her rage at her brother, for keeping her trapped here in this dank dark cell with nothing and nobody but herself, for winning all those years ago because of her stupid carelessness, for living when he should have died like the weakling he is. Her loneliness, a yawning chasm that stretches everywhere she looks, seeking to swallow her whole and never let her out, her grip on the edges of the pit a dangerous fingerhold that’s loosening every day.

She talks to the moon, and sometimes she thinks (hopes) the moon looks back at her and understands.

—

Under the light of the sun at noon, she fashions a knife from the stone of the wall. She sharpens it with lightning and imbues it with her own flame. The flats of the blade are earth-strengthened, and she lets it cut the wind until it whistles. Her blood quenches its thirst, and her vengeful mutterings are the lullabies she sings it to sleep with.

Every day as the sun sinks lower in the sky she hides it as best as she can, away from any kind of light.

—

Zuko has a child.

Her name, Zuko tells her, his face bright with joy, is Izumi. And then he does something he has never done before. He leaves early.

He leaves early, and the next month, he doesn’t come. Azula waits and waits and waits, for something to break the monotony of her life, but he doesn’t come.

She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t cry, when the moon has waxed and waned a cycle and he’s still not back.

She doesn’t cry, because she’s a Princess, a Fire Lord, and she’s better than this. Because she doesn’t care about Zuko, not really, and she doesn’t care about Mai, who came to see her once and never again, or Ty Lee, who stopped coming years ago after Azula kidnapped one of her sisters one time too many in her desperate escape attempts.

Her face is wet with tears, of course, but that’s for a purpose. She feels the warm embrace of the moon—Yue’s embrace—this time, and counts it as a win.

(Zuko comes back the next month, with profuse apologies, dark circles around his eyes.

Azula doesn’t say anything. She never says anything.)

—

There is an old tale of Agni and Tui:

Agni gave birth to Tui when the world was still young, before they descended to the mortal world. Tui loved him and looked up to him. He was a strict father, but he cared for her and doted on her.

But La came to Tui and kissed her and took her hand, and Agni flew into a rage, for he wanted his daughter to admire and care for him and him alone. And so he cast her out of his heart and mind, and cursed her to never look upon him in his full power and glory.

Agni still bears a grudge against La, it is said, though he loves her too.

—

She practices her forms under golden sunlight. Fire and lightning and even the sparks she’s been able to throw since she was barely walking. She practices them all until they’re easy as breathing, easier than breathing.

Every day, she practices. Every day, she basks in the sun and builds her strength.

—

“Yue,” she says. “Yue.”

She says the name every night, as she paces her cell, before bed as she touches herself, in her sleep. Her timing is careful. She watches the waxing and waning of the moon.

It might not make a difference, but then again, it might.

She won’t take any chances.

—

She trains, and forges, and at last, she decides she’s ready.

“Yue,” she says that night, “hold me.”

A direct plea, more than anything she’s asked for before.

Yue does not come to her, but she feels ghostly warm fingers on her shoulders

—

She gets down on her knees, the next day (every bone in her body protests, but she ignores the cries; she’s got a purpose, a job to do, and nothing else matters), and begs. The fingers wrap around her, but Yue doesn’t come.

She kneels the next day, and the next, and presses her forehead to the ground in supplication, and the touches grow stronger and stronger.

Until at last, one night when the moon is at its strongest (and that right there is a flaw in her plan, but she’ll deal with it the way she’s always dealt with it, by strength and stubbornness), the moon herself appears.

Azula hears light footsteps, and chances a look up.

Her breath catches in her throat.

Yue is beautiful.

Her hair shines white and her dark cheeks glow with a silver shimmer. Her eyes are a lake of molten metal, and her smile—

But Azula doesn’t think about her smile.

“Don’t do that, Azula.” Yue’s voice is achingly gentle. “Stand up.”

Azula doesn’t need to be told twice. She scrambles to her feet, and kisses Yue.

It’s a bold move. Bolder than she was planning. Let Yue lead, she’d thought, throw off anything that resembles suspicion.

But Yue is here, standing in front of Azula, more beautiful than anyone else Azula has seen, and Azula can’t help but kiss her. Can’t help but take her into her arms.

Spirit kisses are—

Azula’s never kissed anyone before, so she doesn’t know how normal human kissing would feel. But the way Yue kisses is amazing, soft and sweet but with a pressing sense of command that Azula can’t mistake for anything but Yue saying: _I am the spirit here. I am in charge._

I’m kissing the moon, Azula thinks, and wants to giggle.

She doesn’t. She draws Yue closer to her instead, leads her to the thin sheets and the single pillow on a stone shelf that she calls a bed.

(Yue’s cunt tastes like nothing Azula has ever known.

She shudders under Yue’s ministrations, Yue’s hand teasing Azula with just the right amount of pleasure, barely-there and not enough, until finally, finally, she gives in and allows Azula sweet relief.

Sex with the moon is brilliant, Azula decides. What a pity no-one else will ever get to experience it)

—

Yue is still sleeping in her bed, her face slack and open in a way a spirit shouldn’t look. There’s a moment, where Azula almost thinks that maybe, maybe Yue can—

But no. The first rays of the dawning sun hit Azula’s cell.

Azula picks up her knife.


End file.
